Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Slik
else read him? I've decided to use this NG as my outlet. I live in a
small town, no big readers here and have never gone to Uni so my passion has
not been diluted or beaten. I still want to talk books with people though
so SPEAK UP.
-Slik
Arcadian Rises
writes:
>Reading The General in His Labyrinth.
Yes, long time ago. GGMdid a lot of research for that book, although it doesn't
look recherche at all. That's part of GGM's magic.
> I really like G. G. Marquez, anybody
>else read him?
"Love in time of cholera"(a great love story) and, of course "One hundred years
of solitute, a must-read masterpiece. Also, some short stories and interviews.
I'm very saddened by GGM's terminal illness.
Ed Cryer
student of languages.
I´ve read Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada, Cien Años de Soledad, El Amor en
Los Tiempos del Cólera, El Coronel no tiene Quien le Escribe. I´m currently
reading El Otoño del Patriarca.
There´s something I can´t properly define about the mixture of reality and
general principles that attracts me greatly. For example, in Cien Años
there´s the block of ice brought in as a thing of wonder, and then the old
Spanish galleon found rotting in a field of poppies when someone goes
exploring beyond the boundaries of the village. This mix of story-telling
and fantasy conveys a lot to me about life in Latin America.
Ed
"Slik" <a8a1...@telus.net> wrote in message
news:uolRb.31352$oj2.22067@edtnps89...
Bill Linares
Slik
news:20040127150255.23171.00003724@mb-
> Yes, long time ago. GGMdid a lot of research for that book, although it
doesn't
> look recherche at all. That's part of GGM's magic.
>
All the documented letters and histories and then all of a sudden there's
these visually heavy descriptions of the young women he's always stumbling
upon in the middle of the night. Battles, glowing beetles sewn into
clothing, slavery and freedom, It's quite the culture shock for me. I can
just imagine the lawsuits in this day and age.
-Slik
Joanne Marinelli
shorter work, and in some ways more poignant than his masterpiece-- but on
some level, I've tired of magical realism, which isn't the fault of Hispanic
Americana, though I am interested in exploring more Borges still.
Never read your title. Is it a collection or a novel?
Joanne
Joanne Marinelli
> "Love in time of cholera"(a great love story) and, of course "One hundred
years
> of solitute, a must-read masterpiece. Also, some short stories and
interviews.
> I'm very saddened by GGM's terminal illness.
>
killed off, but GGM made his mark in the genre.
Joanne
Slik
based on the life of Simon Bolivar
http://65.1911encyclopedia.org/B/BO/BOLIVAR.htm and his attempts to liberate
south america.
-Slik
"Joanne Marinelli" <the-pals...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:h8%Vb.8554$fV5.2...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Joanne Marinelli
> I don't know, what's the difference between a collection and a novel?
It's
> based on the life of Simon Bolivar
> http://65.1911encyclopedia.org/B/BO/BOLIVAR.htm and his attempts to
liberate
> south america.
>
> -Slik
A collection of shorter stories as opposed to one story of novel length
revolving around a central character. 100 Years of Solitude is a novel which
follows a family through several generations. I don't really know if GGM
published shorter collections as Isabel Allende does, but he was certainly
prolific enough to have done so.
Love And Other Demons is more like a novella of his old age, and I saw a
film based on one of his works about a grandmother who made a granddaughter
prostitute herself, but magical realism is really difficult to translate on
film, and it was an uneven movie.
I am tired of MR because I have read so much of it from the late 90's on.
It's invention can be (vaguely) accredited to Gunther Grass in Germany, The
Tin Drum, Borges, in Argentina, who was writing in the same period, and
Italo Calvino, an Italian author whom I personally like best, in terms of
his style and overt romantic sympathies.
Many followed in their wake, including GGM, Rushdie, Allende, and many
inferior imitators-- IMO it was Grass' genius which lit the match. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize a few years ago.
But this is what you're enjoying, the fantastical within the everyday world.
Joanne
Slik
then. I wonder if I'm distantly related, I have the same last name, though
it is probably a common name over there.
-Slik
"Joanne Marinelli" <the-pals...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:N_fWb.13605$fV5.3...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Dogman
my taste.news:h8%Vb.8554$fV5.2...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
~~seadancer~~
> What tires you about Magic Realism? There's not enough
> of it out there for my taste.
Ah, so *that's* what it's called... "Magical Realism"!
I just finished reading _Love in the Time of Cholera_ (1988) and
enjoyed it very much. I had never read anything by GG Marquez
before this. He won the Nobel Prize in 1982.
> http://almaz.com/nobel/literature/1982a.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From above webpage:
"1982 Nobel Laureate in Literature for his novels and
short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic
are combined in a richly composed world of imagination,
reflecting a continent's life and conflicts."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My own comments in an e-mail to a friend were:
========================================
I have only about 2 or 3 pages left in the _Love...Cholera_ book.
I've copied 12 loose-leaf pages (9"x6&1/2") of notes.
There's something about Marquez' writing style which appeals
to me. He has a certain rhythm in his prose which scans well.
It's almost musical in its flow. I would have liked to be able to
read it in his original Spanish.
Since I'm sure you won't read it, I'll tell you something about it.
I believe that the main setting is in Columbia, South America,
on the shores of the Caribbean Sea. Florentino falls head over
heels for Fermina when they were both young. She rejects him
and marries someone else, but he nurses his love for her over
the years until they are both old and decrepit. (Meanwhile, he has
a series of weird relationships to help himself forget her.)
When she becomes a widow he pursues her. The ending so far
is quite satisfying, though very strange and sort of exotic.
I fear for what the last pages will do to them.
[Later, I wrote: "I finished the Cholera book. It has a fairy tale
ending. I can't believe it."]
Much of the prose is character-oriented and I find that interesting.
Fermina and Florentino are both strange birds, as is Fermina's
husband, Dr. Urbino.
Marquez has a subtle sense of humor and several times I had to
burst out loud laughing at his descriptions and anecdotes.
On page 340, it describes the coupling of the old couple as follows:
"Then she took the final step: she searched for him where he was not,
she searched again without hope, and she found him, unarmed.
"It's dead," he said.
Later, more happens.
On page 341 it says: "They were satisfied with the simple joy of
being together."
Page 26-"...wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good".
It's a strange book about strange people and there is actually
very little plot. It's more a series of episodes in the lives of the
protagonists, from their youth to their old age. You see the
perspective of their lives and that's what makes it interesting,
if you're interested in perspectives. It makes you think of the
perspective of your own life. The book also manages to give a
kind of historical perspective as well, including a bit of ecology.*
I guess it was the writing style which held me too.
============================================
*I now realize that this is where we see the "realistic" combined
with the "fantastic", as described in his Nobel Prize.
Slik (in his post on Feb. 5) mentioned Marquez' "visually heavy
descriptions". Yes, Garcia's talents at description are part of
what makes his writing style so appealing.
---Sea
English1413
>> What tires you about Magic Realism? There's not enough
>> of it out there for my taste.
I don't think anyone ever answered this question, so I'll push in and give it a
shot.
Reading creative works can be annoying when it becomes obvious that the writer
is indulging in an egotistical or self-indulgent fantasy. This is what makes
bad poetry so annoying and embarrassing. Writers can avoid this problem by
being realistic, because realism seems like real life, and thus not so much
like a fantasy.
In magic realism, however, the fantastic elements are foregrounded, thus
underscoring the fact that it is not realism, that it is a fantasy. It's
simply not enjoyable (for me) to be forcefully reminded that what I am reading
is made up--it's more fun to imagine it as actually happening.
The worst example of such bad magic realism is, in my opinion, Alice Walker's
novel "The Temple of My Familiar." The main character, an obvious clone of the
author, is an aging black woman. She romps around with animals and loves
everyone, nothing bad that happens to her is ever her fault, and (most
embarrassing of all) young men are wildly sexually attracted to her despite her
age and weirdness. Not a word of it is believable. It's like being forced to
watch the author's masturbation fantasy, and is an actively painful read. If
Walker had used straight realism, she'd have done fine.
So there's my rant against magic realism.
Gray
Arcadian Rises
engli...@aol.comstop (English1413) writes:
Actually, your rant is against _bad_ magic realism. In your own words:
>The worst example of such bad magic realism is, in my opinion, Alice Walker's
>novel "The Temple of My Familiar."
I agree with you that bad magic realism, like any other form of bad writting,
is annoying, boring, even irritating etc. And from your critique of bad realism
I can safely infer that you're quite fond of good magic realism.
Didn't you enjoy reading "The Little Prince" or "One Hundred Years of
Solitude?"
English1413
>
>>The worst example of such bad magic realism is, in my opinion, Alice
>Walker's
>>novel "The Temple of My Familiar."
>
>I agree with you that bad magic realism, like any other form of bad writting,
>is annoying, boring, even irritating etc. And from your critique of bad
>realism
>I can safely infer that you're quite fond of good magic realism.
>
>Didn't you enjoy reading "The Little Prince" or "One Hundred Years of
>Solitude?"
Yes, good point. I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't read the Marquez
novel--I'm so busy with American lit that I rarely read foreign stuff. But I
loved "The Little Prince," and writers like Kafka and Gogol are amazing. "The
Nose," where a man's name leaves his face and runs around the town causing
trouble, is one of my very favorites.
I think it may be the genre shifting that gives me trouble at times. One of
Fowles' novels, I've forgotten the title, begins as a realistic historical
novel set in the 1700s. Then there are these weird shifts where the author
makes postmodern moves, and at one point a group of milkmaids are gathered in a
field when a flying saucer lands nearby, and it's just bizarre. A more pomo
minded person will think, "How interesting that he's drawing attention to the
fictionality of the story." But I just think, "Get back to the story!"
On the other hand, Fowles is so talented you've got to forgive him the
intrusions. Certainly "The French Lieutenants Woman" is awesome. The problem
may occur when less talented writers reach outside of their talents and attempt
something Magical just to be hip.
Remember how great "The Color Purple" is when it's set in the Deep South, and
how awful it is when it shifts to fairyland Africa? I don't know if that's
Magical Realism, exactly, but the author suddenly gives in to self-indulgence
and abandons reality.
Gray
Arcadian Rises
engli...@aol.comstop (English1413) writes:
>The problem
>may occur when less talented writers reach outside of their talents and
>attempt
>something Magical just to be hip.
I think I'm getting your point: bad magical realism is worse than other kinds
of bad writting because it confuses the reader. It's extremelly irritating to
ask yourself what's fact and what's fiction.
In good MR writting you don't really care what's real and what's fiction
because you get carried away by the beauty of the story. In Guenter Grass'
novels (another well deserving laureat of Nobel) it doesn't really matter
what's real and what's magic.
I guess this is the acid test of good MR prose: when you don't ask yourself
what's real and what's not.
Michael Greer
(snipping some complete balderdash)
> Actually, your rant is against _bad_ magic realism. In your own words:
>
> >The worst example of such bad magic realism is, in my opinion, Alice Walker's
> >novel "The Temple of My Familiar."
>
> I agree with you that bad magic realism, like any other form of bad writting,
> is annoying, boring, even irritating etc. And from your critique of bad realism
> I can safely infer that you're quite fond of good magic realism.
>
> Didn't you enjoy reading "The Little Prince" or "One Hundred Years of
> Solitude?"
One wonders how to enjoy when so much remains unsaid. To be left
unsaid is to purchase the possibility of bliss. But bliss comes only
with a twist. The twist that allows all criticism to come forward in
the foregrounding of the belonging.
When the belonging to the work finally becomes the moving force for
the reader, there is no remainder in that the 'bad magic realism'
stands aside as the tractors of our minds move on toward that domain
where pure bliss becomes something conceived yet unrealized.
ONE is reminded that the Little Prince, an excellent work, was
recently discovered int he plane that Saint Expury flew. But without a
clue. Without a clue. Leaving behind a propeller is another way of
working with magical realism.
MGreer
English1413
>what's real and what's not.
Aha, that's it exactly.
Gray
Joanne Marinelli
"Dogman" <dog...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:NKednXwpArM...@centurytel.net...
> What tires you about Magic Realism? There's not enough of it out there
for
> my taste.
I have read the continuing discussion, and I think I fall somewhat into what
English is saying:
My first exposure to MR was through Isabel Allende, _The Stories of Eva
Luna_, which I enjoyed, then Marquez, whom I finally read long after he had
made his reputation, then Calvino, then Rushdie (whom I agree with about
Satanic Verses, in all this Islamic saber rattling the worth of the book
itself was swallowed up, and it's a pity, because if you accept the novel as
a novel it is a pretty good novel), then Grass (the grandfather of the
gendre), and I have had enough fancy dancing, to steal from Sherman Alexie,
who isn't as good as he'd like his readers to think, for my diet.
I mean, I get it now, and I think authors might do well to remember the
story should come first, and the line between technique as a stylistic
signature and mere pretension is a thin one. Rushdie himself falls victim to
it in his shorter works: Readers expect a fantastical force to peppermint
the story, and lo and behold, we have the magic movie shoes from Oz.
At some point it becomes too self-conscious.
Joanne
bar...@cix.compulink.co.uk
the-pals...@worldnet.att.net (Joanne Marinelli) wrote:
> At some point it becomes too self-conscious.
Have you read any David Lodge? Not MR at all, but he plays interesting if
rather self-conscious games with narrative...I would be curious to know
what you think.
~~seadancer~~
> Have you read any David Lodge? Not MR at all, but he plays interesting if
> rather self-conscious games with narrative...I would be curious to know
> what you think.
What genre is David Lodge, i.e., how would you
classify his writings?
BTW, is the correct term "magical realism" or
"magic realism"? I see both terms being used here.
---Sea
Arcadian Rises
Marinelli" <the-pals...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>Rushdie (whom I agree with about
>Satanic Verses, in all this Islamic saber rattling the worth of the book
>itself was swallowed up, and it's a pity, because if you accept the novel as
>a novel it is a pretty good novel),
But it's hard to follow, at least for me. You have to be very fluent in Koran
and the scandals in Indian movie industry to properly enjoy the reading.
I don't mind being educated in the most obscure passages of Koran, but I'll
pass the Indian (or any other nation) movie celebrities.
Arcadian Rises
>
>Have you read any David Lodge? Not MR at all, but he plays interesting if
>rather self-conscious games with narrative...I would be curious to know
>what you think.
I prefer early David Lodge. I still didn't read "Therapy". I started it when it
first appeared, then I put it aside to deal with an emergency reading and
somehow I didn't have the desire to finish it. I guess I find it too
Zeitgeisty.
bar...@cix.compulink.co.uk
arcadi...@aol.com (Arcadian Rises) wrote:
It's worth checking out the reissue of his first novel, The Picturegoers.
(Penguin, I think.) It's not a particularly good book but the
introduction, written much later when he was an accomplished novelist, is
interesting on aspects of the writer's craft.
bar...@cix.compulink.co.uk
seadan...@yahoo.com (~~seadancer~~) wrote:
> <bar...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote
> > Have you read any David Lodge? Not MR at all, but he plays
> > interesting if
> > rather self-conscious games with narrative...I would be curious to
> > know
> > what you think.
>
> What genre is David Lodge, i.e., how would you
> classify his writings?
Comedy of manners, I suppose.
> BTW, is the correct term "magical realism" or
> "magic realism"? I see both terms being used here.
I'd never heard "magic realism" until this discussion started, only
"magical realism". It may be a case of two countries separated by a common
language.
~~seadancer~~
> seadan...@yahoo.com (~~seadancer~~) wrote:
> > What genre is David Lodge, i.e., how would you
> > classify his writings?
>
> Comedy of manners, I suppose.
>
> > BTW, is the correct term "magical realism" or
> > "magic realism"? I see both terms being used here.
>
> I'd never heard "magic realism" until this discussion started, only
> "magical realism". It may be a case of two countries separated by a common
> language.
Thank you, Barney.
I googled a bit and learned a bit more about David Lodge.
> http://www3.shropshire-cc.gov.uk/lodge.htm
I also looked at some reviews of his books at Amazon.com.
His book _Changing Places_ sounds like great fun.
The title reminded me of the movie "Trading Places". So I
had to clear up that little confusion for myself. (g)
---Sea
bar...@cix.compulink.co.uk
seadan...@yahoo.com (~~seadancer~~) wrote:
Yeah, it's a good one. Though not much like the movie! ;)
<idly wonders why Shropshire County Council would have a David Lodge
page...>
~~seadancer~~
> seadan...@yahoo.com (~~seadancer~~) wrote:
> > Thank you, Barney.
> > I googled a bit and learned a bit more about David Lodge.
> > > http://www3.shropshire-cc.gov.uk/lodge.htm
> > I also looked at some reviews of his books at Amazon.com.
> > His book _Changing Places_ sounds like great fun.
> > The title reminded me of the movie "Trading Places". So I
> > had to clear up that little confusion for myself. (g)
>
> Yeah, it's a good one. Though not much like the movie! ;)
(G) No, not like the movie, of course, but I did wonder
if the screenwriter of "Trading Places" might have gotten the
basic idea from the David Lodge's book, _Changing Places_.
As I think about it, the plot premise of changing places may
be a fairly common one in literature. I'm thinking of books like
_The Prince and the Pauper_ by Mark Twain.
As for movies, "Roman Holiday" is based on a similar idea,
with a princess playing at being a commoner for a day.
Do any others books or movies of this type come to mind?
---Sea
bar...@cix.compulink.co.uk
seadan...@yahoo.com (~~seadancer~~) wrote:
> I did wonder
> if the screenwriter of "Trading Places" might have gotten the
> basic idea from the David Lodge's book, _Changing Places_.
> As I think about it, the plot premise of changing places may
> be a fairly common one in literature. I'm thinking of books like
> _The Prince and the Pauper_ by Mark Twain.
> As for movies, "Roman Holiday" is based on a similar idea,
> with a princess playing at being a commoner for a day.
> Do any others books or movies of this type come to mind?
Faked, or mistaken, identities are a mainstay of innumerable stories, of
course. Deliberate /swapping/...nothing comes immediately to mind but I'll
think of half a dozen examples after hitting Save and follow up then. ;)
Incidentally, "swapping" has become a big theme in British reality TV
recently - shows where people swap jobs, houses, families etc. for a week
or two. Do you get this in the States (where I'm guessing you are) too?